Oh yeah, this is going to carry a country far. This "post-modern" notion of a one-size-fits-all concept of nation: the political block of people who don't have to conform to anything; is one of the most dangerous and ultimately self-destructive notions that post-modernism has ever come up with.

And if its straight on Canada's doorstep, its as good a time as any to happily spend Dominion Day weekend happily reminding all of you:

I am not Canadian.I am Albertan, and will never again lower myselfto the level of being some "Canadian".

If you want to have any moral and philosophical edge in the coming war(s) that post-modernism will inflict upon us, Alberta as the shining beacon in space all alone in the night is your best bet.

Mr. Griffiths noted that an attachment to national symbols such as Olympic hockey or the Timbit has remained strong even as knowledge of the country's history and practices — what he called "civic literacy"— has declined.

Well, the jury went for deliberations yesterday, but Steyn's newsfeed isn't dying down so soon. Today he writes:

Oh, well. The entire press corps - Chicagoans, New Yorkers, Brits, Canucks, the lot - stampeded into court, as did all four defendants and families, to hear the jury's first note to the judge. It read as follows:

"Dear Judge,

"We will be meeting today from 9am to 4.45pm. Tomorrow, 6/29, we will meet from 9am to 1pm."

Thrilling stuff.

(Seriously, though, the whole site is worth quite the read. He should archive it in .pdf for future generations or some such thing.)

2007-06-27

For a while it didn't feel like this day would ever come. Yet here we are, and time to celebrate another posting milestone. Unlike last time, the dreaded "I hate you Blogger Beta" timeframe, there have been practically no changes made to the blog over the past 100 posts. What we have had are lots of posts, and I'll crunch the numbers as has become the tradition. Again, the monthly auto-counting saves me lots of time.

In April, I made 31 posts in 27 days, 3 hours, 13 minutes, for a posting rate of one post every 0.8573 days (ie every 21 hours, 0 minutes, 25 seconds). In May, 38 posts in the 31 days for a rate of one post every 0.8158 days (ie every 19 hours, 34 minutes, 44 seconds). In June, so far I've made 30 posts in 27 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes for a posting rate of one post every 0.9157 days (ie every 21 hours, 58 minutes, 40 seconds). In total, we are looking at 99 posts in 85.60 days, for a total posting rate of one post every 0.86 days (ie every 20 hours, 45 minutes, 10.91 seconds). Not bad not bad.

Anyways, now for a look at what exciting posts you could have read here over the past couple three months:Best reads:

With the Great Satan (America) being relatively quiet, and the Secondary Satan (Britain) paying a price, and their terror cells in Fifth Cousin to Satan Thrice Removed (Canada) broken up, Muslim terrorists have concentrated on the next Jew-led government trying to bring on a new crusades. Problem is, their choice makes no sense. Lebanon?

A dispute over where to put high-voltage power lines has been making big news in Alberta lately. Possible violence at hearings, threats to board members, secret hiring of Private Investigators, angry protests being bussed in from the city...sounds like a great time for a pun.

Which is why, after the past several weeks of reading into the tales of the Alberta Energy & Utilities Board Committee hearings (relevent background links #1, #2, #3†,#4, and #5), I feel sorry for the headline writers at major newspapers (Journal/Herald/SUN in particular), because it seems in this entire story they have missed out on an amazing possible headline:

NIMBY in Rimbey

That nobody other than me has written these words before is more than a bit of a shame.

† From what I've heard on the issue, actual local residents were not entirely thrilled by a bunch of hippies from the city being trained and organized and bussed down for the protest. (Again, why do leftists enjoy protesting so much). Its upset some people enough that I've heard somebody in the town has been destroying the protesters signs and publicly burning them on the spot -- and its a well-known local rather than a PI from what I've been told. Funny how that didn't make it into the Straight Goods articles...

Update, 2:25pm: I spoke too soon: Neil Waugh wrote in the Edmonton SUN on April 3rd that the Lavesta Area group was "the NIMBY from Rimbey"

2007-06-26

The sad wrestling news of the day is the sudden death of Edmonton's own Chris Benoit and his family in Atlanta. Chris was in the top 3 of my favorite wrestlers of all time, and he'll be missed terribly.

I suppose that this goes to show what timing is all about. Assumably at the time he wrote that, Mike was unaware of this story.

I assume its also time for the standard caveat that Benoit is only alleged (or in the U.S. do dead men get guilticized regardless of trials? It's not an idle question or an anti-American dig, but I noticed for example the Virginia Tech shooter isn't 'alleged').

Still, a little rough. I suppose its very Christian of him to express remorse over the incident and say that the man will be missed. Mike's a decent guy though, from anybody who remembers his columns, so I have a feeling he's slightly eating those words this morning.

Update, June 27 2007 11:05am: As the commenter below has noted, Mike has updated with more on the story, including noting that as I suspected, he didn't know the full extent of the tale when the post was made. This is, I believe, the first and last time anybody will ever link to my blog under the heading "This would explain all the hits I got on the site today".

(As an aside, somebody should create an archive of all the Cubs related violence this season. How many fights have there been this year? I think the Cubs have more non-Barrett related scraps than any other team, and then add in the new poster boy for "Clubhouse Cancer" and you've got a wild season before the All-Star break even begins.)

2007-06-24

I haven't had much to say about hockey lately (hey, imagine Cherepanov and Esposito on the same team...it could have happened K-Lowe...it could have happened).Oddly enough, mc79 hockey has had a recent post about Edmonton Police and their shoddy behaviour during the Oilers Cup run last year. I've posted on it a couple of times, I will be posting more on it tomorrow...just to give you a heads up. It's getting pretty intense.

Update, Jun 26 2007 2:33am: The thread continues, with a surprising number of people willing to personally attack me (and imply I'm a criminal) and defend EPS for no particular good reason. (Bitch must have deserved it!)

Well, this is a long post a long time coming. It's time for me to say I told you so. Then I'll make some suggestions about what should happen, and when they don't happen and other undesirable things happen and bad things continue to happen and/or get worse, I shall say I told you so again.

the next candidate for Premier should be a drinker. Not a louse or anything, but a good hardcore Churchill-style drinker. An outright alcoholic is probably a bad thing, but he definitely should toe the line a little bit. A drinker in the job would show we have a real man for the position: one who isn't afraid to lay in bed drinking a Guinness at 3:30am watching Yes, Minister on DVD after finishing a blog post. A guy who's willing to take all the bullshit stress that comes with such a high position and then slam some Jack Daniels on his downtime to leave him emotionally ready to do the job again the next morning. A Premier of the Province of Alberta who can hang around at a pub working out the issues of the day until eventually stumbling on the brilliant clarity that such sessions typically bring (such as "why don't we make health care entirely 100% private and user pay and make grocery stores nationalized and free" or "if she's gonna wear a tube top and miniskirt to Filthy Freakin' McNasty's then I should be allowed to just walk up and squeeze her ass with no possible legal consequence" or "if we changed the lyrics to the Skynard song just a little, Sweet Home Alberta would be a kick-ass national anthem").

If Oberg/Norris/Morton/Stelmach are all casual drinkers or something, then we may have a problem. I might have to join the campaign to run this province prematurely. I had hoped for a Norris/Morton soft separatist in power first just to let things build up, but as I guzzle my 2nd AGD in 45 minutes and ponder a couple shots of Jagermeister before bedtime, I am left concerned that we might not have time to dilly-dally. The next Premier of Alberta has to be some sort of drunkard. Or we're all in trouble.

The problem is, this is a stupid idea. (The Edmonton Journal is for it, which is a good first sign. Of course, Todd Babiuk is against it, so perhaps the media metric isn't the indicator I should be using here). For one thing, nobody has shown that "18 year olds" are causing serious bar problems that "19 year olds and up" are not. For another, the problem at the bars has to do in general with overcrowding and being unable to keep up with demand, which was a problem of the previous "solution" (see, for example, bringing in heavier restrictions on the number of people permitted in an establishment on Whyte Avenue). More importantly, its a serious restriction on the freedom of what adults can do: bringing in a subclass of adults ("aged 18") who have fewer rights than a subgroup of adults ("19 and up"). It's a logical inconsistency that only Alberta/Manitoba/Quebec have worked around, and its more than just a rotten shame that Alberta is considering leaving an exclusive club of forward thinkers.

In fact, its the subject of directional thinking that seems to strike at the core of this. The U.S., to one of her great detriments, subscribes to this theory that there is a group of adults for whom every right in the Union is bestowed upon save one -- magical fire-water. If you're 18-20 in the USA, you find yourself able to join the army, or vote, or legally be in enforceable contracts, or be unable to be tried as a minor, as able to run for all offices except the Presidency, or enter into sexual relationships with vastly older persons, etc. etc. etc. But to have a beer with your dinner at Red Lobster? No no no, that simply cannot be done.

Meanwhile, in Europe the opposite approach is taken. Germany's drinking age is 18, unless you're only drinking beer or wine, then its 16. Other countries such as France and Austria, follow this message. Italy and Greece have straight up drinking ages of 16. Many countries require you to be 18 to buy alcohol, but you can drink it, even in bars, at 16. (So bootlegging becomes not quite so serious a worry). Furthermore, Wikipedia notes that in European countries the enforcement is lackluster at best and a well-acknowledged joke at least. As the line goes, if in Europe, they will serve you a drink so long as you can get up onto the barstool.

Now here's the rub: all of these good anti-Americans out there like to brag about how Canada is more continental than America, how we are more lax and liberal and European about so many matters. Well, that sounds like great news if your looking for a fag-wedding, but if you want to dare consume alcohol in a public street or stay up until 6am having a drink, you're sure not going to feel like you're in a very liberal continental nation.

There's an easy way to cut down on all this bar violence and worry. And no, it doesn't involve privacy invasion scanning software. What it involves is a little common sense. A more liberal approach, if you can imagine these words being typed by my little fingers. I stress, with no irony whatsoever, that I am stone sober as I write this entry.

First off, if the drinking age in Alberta is to go anywhere, it should be going down. 16 sounds like a good end-point, though at this juncture I'm not sure we should be ruling out 14. Maybe 14 to buy at a liquor store or drink in a restaurant, and 16 to go into a bar. We'll see.

Secondly, the caps on the number of bars in places like 17th Avenue in Calgary or Whyte Avenue in Edmonton need to go by the wayside as quickly and as easily as possible. Want to know a reason for so much of this bar violence? There are lines to get in. Once in the bar is half-packed and there are lines to get served. When everybody gets kicked out at 2am (more on this later), there are lines to get pizza and donairs. Putting this many people in lines is dangerous enough, let alone when one or two of them are drunk. Unfortunately, as Edmonton's population has exploded (mostly with young men who like to drink), arse-bandits like Michael Phair have gone and put burdoning regulations on the number of establishments that can be opened in places like Whyte. However, since there are already bars there, people flock to them, and the end result is crowds of people wanting places to sit and drink that the City of Edmonton has ruled they don't get.

If you're at a bar in a major Albertan metropolis these days, you aren't going to be surrounded by a bunch of white bread Central Alberta hicks. You'll be around a bunch of these East Indians who love to commit violent acts. You'll encounter guys from the local vietnamese gang. A bunch of black guys who think they're the next coming of 50 Cent. In other words, you are now elbow to elbow (see point #2) with some of post-moderninity's least desirable ethnics self-ghettoed losers who are more interested in keeping up their reputation with similar men of their ilk then functioning as members of a sensible society. For the record, Newfies and all those Quebec shitheads who've been polluting the bars lately fall into this category as well.

Fourthly, the mandatory 2am closing time has long outlived her usefulness. Anybody ever notice all the violence that takes place at 2am? All the people fighting for cabs and pizzas and women trying to leave with the 17th guy they made eyes at on the dance floor at Bar Wild while the 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 23rd, and 25th guys are all trying to leave with her as well. Notice anything in common here? Some sort of combining thread? Any economists in the crowd would quickly jump up with the answer, I suspect: allocation of resources. Suddenly, at 2am, thousands upon thousands of drunk partyers are thrown out into the streets. Taxicabs, already hard to get because no new licences have been allowed in the past decade of growth, tend to avoid Whyte because of the violence, reducing further the number of cabs. Therefore these people aren't going anywhere, for there is nowhere but home for them to go and no way to get there. Don't be surprised when you start seeing violence arising from such a circumstance. Now if there was no such thing as last call, what would happen? Well, not all bars would stay open all night (South American and China, for example, have no closing time, and some bars close at set times, and others will remain open all night as long as a certain number of clientele are still on the premises), but a few would. Those who want to still drink at 4am might go there. Others might just want to head home. More importantly, any bar that closes at 2am won't be responsible for letting out the entire bar population at the same time. (For those who say that they would never do this, BPs on Whyte and often The Next Act Pub will close at midnight or 1am, even on weeknights...clearly bars will make up their own minds).

To expand on the point above, its time that the City of Edmonton be serious about entering the 24-hour society. Whyte Avenue busses should be running all night. If taxicabs on Whyte are so scarce, maybe the city should license another 50-150 cars that are permitted only to operate between midnight and 4am and/or only permitted to pick-up passengers between Whitemud and Saskatchewan Drive, 114th street to 99th.

Finally, its time too that the province and the city both think about relaxing some of the 1920s-era restrictions on booze. Do what New Orleans does: maybe set up a zone from 99th street to 109th street, 81st Avenue to 83rd Avenue where open alcohol in non-glass containers is legal. Have it run from the start of May Long Weekend until the end of Labour Day Weekend, and close off selected side-streets (Whyte cannot be closed off, at least until the City smartens up and puts a railway overpass at University (76th) Avenue to allow east-west throughflow). Encourage drinking and partying on Whyte Avenue. If this is unpalatable to the city, pick another area of town that can be closed off in this fashion [downtown, perhaps...no late night traffic there! -ed] and licence the hell out of that strip for bar traffic. Make it the new late-night party destination. [seriously, how about the area around Northlands, so the city isn't worried about the dead zone surrounding our hockey stadium? -ed] For Pete's sake, New Orleans partiers were delighted to hear that we had an active bar strip in Edmonton with an 18-year old drinking age. Market this. Use this. Maybe we could lose the reputation of a boring city with nothing to do if the powers-that-be weren't too busy concentrating on ending any fun activity in this city not related to shoving things up your ass.

2007-06-22

Today I went to CompuSmart southside and discovered...it was all closed up. (Naturally, even though I had my digital camera, I never bothered to take a picture). At Memory Express I learned that Compusmart across the entire province has closed its doors as of today. (So much for that hot economy, eh?)

BCOM's store at 118th and 156th street closed it doors too, I seemed to think. Today I learned its just moved a block further down the street than I bothered to go. Whoops. Meanwhile, BCOM southside has basically become a little room where they show you all the product on their website that they can order in. Back to Best Buy, I suppose.

Why on earth should lighthouse protection be a matter for the federal government at all? Sure the consitution can be read to mean that lighthouses fall under the federal government's ocean purview, just like how it can these days be read to say almost anything (c.f. poofter rights). That doesn't mean something that has to be considered a local issue for B.C. and Maritime voters need tie up the attention of the Canadian Parliament.

There's also a western alienation issue at stake here [can you really say that when discussing a B.C. issue sponsored by Senator Pat Carney? -ed], because I don't remember the feds coming to the rescue of Alberta's grain elevators.

2007-06-13

Well, if you're Joss Whedon you make a musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

However, what most people didn't know up until that point, that was quickly discovered after, was that one castmember, James "Spike" Marsters, is a member of an LA based rock band ("Ghost of the Robot" or some such thing).

Well, here's the YouTube video...didya notice that he sings it with his full SoCal accent, leaving behind the British gag?

With all of this turmoil going on, the U.S. has to be able to stand up and take decisive action. President Bush needs to deliver a bold, concise, and strong speech that makes it clear how the civilized world should react to this new crisis in the Middle East.

In the interests of being a good neighbour, I have written a rough draft of the President's speech in response to the Mid-East crisis:

Cool.

In all seriousness, from any reasonable western viewpoint, this can't help but be a good thing. First off, every day that the Arabs spend killing each other is another day they aren't going about the business of killing us. Secondly, every violent action al Qaida takes in Palestine breaks down a little bit of the support they get around the world by self-declared "enemies of the Joos". To be honest, there's not a lot of logical disconnect in that corner of the globe, but even the most vehement anti-American Islamic nutjob has to wonder where this global terrorism thing gets them if Palestinians start musing that they were better off living under the big Jew-rat tent rather than the liberal and homogeneous wackjob Muslim one.

2007-06-09

That's right kids, my prediction made after the conference finals came true.

Which one was that? (I do make many)

That an Anaheim win would at least give the NHL some TV exposure (the most hockey playoff advertising NBC did the entire playoff run, one may not). Chris f'ing Pronger, Jean Giguere (any idea why people have to announce his entire name? This was the second worst thing about listening to Cole during the finals, the worst being this "Buka-Man" who played defense for the quacks), and Brad May instead appeared with the Cup. I wouldn't be surprised to see Pronger on there someday not answering questions about why he left Edmonton.

Regardless, at the end of the scene, Pronger throws the Tonight Show guy the cup. Were he a knowledgeable hockey fan, he'd throw it back and ask for it to be tested for STDs first.

It wasn't just a matter of using the private jet so much as it was that there were other scheduled flights to/from the same destinations. That doesn't stop the global warming lies, mind you: the director of the U.N.'s Environmental Agency UNEP claims there was no other way to attend the conference. Sure the average Joe has to schlump around on commuter flights and cabs and trains and rental cars, but the jetsetting global warming climate change fighters aren't the average Joe. Their environmental compassion, if not their environmental action, has landed them big bucks. As the UN's Achim Steiner says, just buy a climate ticket that makes your trip carbon neutral. And if you can't afford a 'climate ticket'? Well, you'd better make serious changes to your lifestyle such as ditching the car, eschewing all air travel, etc. etc. etc. On the bright side, you might be able to get a couple little handouts from the global elite as they pay you a small stipend to not enjoy your own life so they can enjoy theirs. Then again, chances are that the only people the global elite will be sending money to is their own well-heeled friends who run a sham industry of "climate tickets" and "carbon credits".

Well, I tried watching part of the CNN candidates debate that was on this afternoon, but it wasn't going anywhere so I gave up.

We're all waiting to see if Fred Thompson can still give speeches like he did back when he was a lobbyist, or if he is too used to parroting the lines writers have given him. It remains to be seen.

Also odd, I noticed, was the CNN "regular person" plant in the audience who...oh hey look, lost a child† in Iraq. Lost a child in Iraq eight days before he was due to return home. I put this in bold primarily because CNN seemed to think it was important: they put it up on screen as a graphic during her question. With 6 month tours of duty (or less, in some cases), 8 days isn't a particularly ironic timeframe. Six months is about 25 weeks (the baseball season, as it happens), so 1/25th of all soldiers likely kick the bucket in the final week or so of their campaign. Even though there have been less than 4000 casualties so far, that still represents 160 guys who would likely have died in Iraq in their last week. It was so laughable, I never did answer the question.

† Of course, I do read Mark Steyn, and know full well that its a little odd to be referring to guys in their 20s as "children", particularly when I live in a country that declares 14 year old girls to be sexually equivalent of 30 year olds.

2007-06-05

Well, Anaheim in 5 doesn't quite cover the Senators choking I expected, but its close.

I'm still miffed about all the pro-Sens garbage in Edmonton. I mean, is Comrie forgiven now? Does nobody else, pace Neil Boortz, pay taxes anymore?

Anyways, ironically I'm more here to talk about the faggiest sports news ever, even more so than two golfers falling to injury. Good thing these people don't play hockey!

Anyways, there's such a thing as the "Autism Speaks" race this past weekend, which they had postponed due to rain. That is so homo.

They're sitting in cars, and they can't handle rain? And don't feed me any bullshit about "the track", because do you know who doesn't cancel events due to rain?

Formula One.

Quick, between NASCAR and Formula One, which series features open cockpit-style drivers seats? That's right, Formula One. Which features enclosed hoods and windshields? Why...NASCAR. So naturally its NASCAR that postpones races due to some water falling on the track.

This is why NASCAR, despite its leagues of fans, will never be taken seriously.

2007-06-04

Unfortunately, he cut off all the good bits, leaving us only with the smallest hint of skin from 21 year old Ashley Arsenault and none from fellow 21er Krista Eymundson. Well, I can come to the rescue, and direct you to this link which includes this photo:

I can't fall behind with the summer Whyte-ave photography season just around the corner, so I present a stopgap measure. Photos of the hot Women's Tennis stars.

No time/energy for major rankings, so here are a few big names with big...tracts of land:2005 Newcomer of the Year winner Sania Mirza looks awfully hot in glasses.2006 Newcomer of the Year winner Agnieszka Radwańska has a hard to write name unless you cut and paste. She's hotter 'cuz she's young, isn't she?Belarus' Anastasiya Yakimova is cursed with the "amazing body/unappealing face" combo that is so prevalent in women's tennis (all non-hot players except for Venus Williams and the Chinese are like that...maybe Aranxta Sanchez Vicario as a 'so ugly the body can't make up for it' may fall in there as well).Now cute from top to bottom is a good way to describe Caroline Wozniacki, the Danish sexpot that captured our hearts and...well, we'll leave it at that.The U.S. has been having trouble of late with attractive tennis players, but Ashley Harkleroad is doing her best to change that. Disturbing, however, is why Google's image searches on her name reveal this picture that at first glance looks way too much like a penis.They may be cowardly wimps and overbearing poseurs on this planet, but the French do provide us girls like Mathilde Johansson to make up for it.